Disney Into The Woods

   The famous Tony Award winning musical "Into The Woods" was adapted into a Disney production that premiered on Christmas Day of this past year. In a meeting with a group of high school theatre teachers, the Award-winning composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim revealed the changes in the film to discuss the challenges they faced when it came to artistic censorship in an educational setting. After 27 years of existence, the musical idea was transferred but also edited. To keep the film PG the content of the movie was altered. It followed the Disney guidelines. 
"Disney had concerns over several adult themes in the fairytale musical and that some alterations had been made to the script and score, including the potential removal of the song "Any Moment."
   For the musical fans, some songs were cut and important content remained latent. As for the general public, the film was not advertised as a musical, so part of the demographic was very surprised to pay to see 125 minutes of singing. 

  Although the misconceptions about its content, the film was very well casted. Famous actors like Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Anna Kendrick, and Emily Blunt stared in the movie and caused a huge following for the film. Along with the celebrity talk about it, the producers released  The official teaser trailer on July 31, 2014. A featurette was released showing behind-the-scenes clips and the vocals of Streep, Kendrick, Blunt and others. A second trailer was released on November 6, 2014.

  James Lapine (director) said "After it finally opened on Broadway I thought, “Well, this is perfect for a Disney animated musical movie,” and they weren’t interested. And then somebody optioned it after that a few years later, and it just never took off. I don’t know why."

The producers were very successful in getting a lot of hype for this movie. Yes it was not the clearest advertisement, but with the big famous cast and the Disney aspect to it, the film got many positive reviews and was able to adapt well to the big screen and still keep true to the original Broadway musical. 

URL:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180411/

Article Title:

Into the Woods

Website Title:

IMDb

URL:

http://deadline.com/2015/01/james-lapine-interview-into-the-woods-stephen-sondheim-1201343652/

Article Title:

Tony Winner James Lapine Finds Himself An Easy Path 'Into The Woods' Of Broadway and Hollywood

Website Title:

Deadline

Publication date:

2015-01-07

URL:

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/sondheim-issues-response-following-report-of-disney-into-the-woods-film-cha-322818

Article Title:

Sondheim Issues Response Following Report of Disney Into the Woods Film Changes

Website Title:

Playbill